What Do We Have To Lose?
by samslostshoe
Summary: It's few nights before the apocalypse, and Dean can't sleep. Perhaps he can find some comfort with Cas. After all, with the world ending soon, what more can they lose? Note: may add more to this, perhaps a bit after the end of the apocalypse. But for now, let's call it finished.


Dean's eyes traced the rough, uneven, off-white ceiling endlessly, unseeingly. His mind was curiously blank, though he'd expected it to be buzzing with thought. Only a few days before the potential end of the apocalypse and his brain seemed to have burned itself clean of noise. And yet he still couldn't sleep.

He glanced over at the opposite bed, with its sheets undisturbed. Sam had taken to cruising in the Impala at night, rather than join his brother in fruitless attempts at unconsciousness. He passed his hands over his eyes, closing them briefly.

The door creaked.

Dean's eyes flicked open. "Cas."

"Hello, Dean," the angel, now more human than celestial, replied. In the half-light of the dingy motel, his blue eyes were shadowed, and it made Dean uncomfortable. Their inky blackness was all too much like the scum Dean had spent years hunting. "C'mere," he ordered, sitting up, throwing off the sheets, and patting the empty space on the bed next to him. Cas obeyed, sitting stiffly, as though the bed were filled with cement and not springs.

They sat in silence for a long moment.

"How are you feeling?" Castiel's gravelly voice broached the silence. The corners of Dean's mouth twitched. Cas was becoming more and more human, and Dean recognized his tentative attempts at compassion and empathy in those four simple words.

"Honestly? I'm not feeling one hundred percent," Dean said, smiling wryly. Cas looked at him, tilting his head slightly and creasing his eyebrows. Dean sighed. Cas was doing his very best to understand how to be human. "Cas, I could be losing my brother in a couple of days," Dean confided, the worries that had been nagging at him for much too long finally released from his tongue, spiraling chaotically over his lips into strangely honest words. "I could lose everyone, Cas. I—," he broke off, placing his head in his hands.

A warm touch on his shoulder surprised him. Cas had laid his hand gently on Dean's arm, his delicate fingers applying a soft, reassuring pressure. When Dean turned his head slightly, his eyelashes brushed across those fingers, and he could feel something inside him, the stirring of feelings that Dean thought he had quashed. Because he couldn't feel that way about Cas, it didn't make sense.

Tentatively, Dean placed his own hand on top of the angel's. When he returned Cas' confused, curious gaze, he smiled at him, really smiled. For the first time in ages, he remembered once again the absolute freedom of true, uninhibited feeling. He gently laced his fingers with Cas', placing his other hand on the angel's rough, badly shaven cheek, feeling the shaving nicks and wondering at them. That such a wise creature could be so inexperienced in a trivial human area baffled him.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he leaned in and pressed his lips to Castiel's own full ones.

Cas' response was exuberant. His newfound human emotions manifested in one great surge, and Dean found himself astonished at the angel's kissing prowess. It was as though Cas was dying of thirst and Dean was, at last, a drink of cool water.

"Cas—," Dean gasped, brokenly. He could feel the wall he had built up for so long beginning to crumble. Cas silenced him with his lips, and with each touch, Dean's wall fragmented until there was nothing left but dust.

After that, it became a sort of hyper-focused blur. Dean savored every second, some more than others: the tug of Cas' calloused hands on his chest, the surprising heat of his skin as dean trailed his fingers over his hipbones, the coarse feel of Cas' hair as Dean ran his hands through it, the salty taste of his back as Dean kissed it, insatiably.

And when it was over, Dean lay with Cas cradled in the crook of his arm. Cas shifted a little, finding a comfortable position within Dean's embrace, tucking his cold nose into the pocket of warmth is the hollow of Dean's collarbone. Dean's lips were pressed on the top of Cas' head, gently.

"Cas?"

No response from the immobile angel. Dean cleared his throat, and mumbled quietly into Cas' hair, "I love you."

With that, he closed him eyes and allowed himself to drift, finally, into sleep. As the world faded around him, the deep tones of Cas' voice reverberated in his chest as he murmured, "And I you."


End file.
